[US]Creating Maritime Friction Against the Spirit of Cooperation - A Look at the Indo-Pacific Maritime Situational Awareness Partnership

Author: Hu Bo, academic member of Pangu Think Tank and director of the Marine Strategy Research Centre of Peking University, from Guangming Daily, December 5, 2022.

Unofficially translated from https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/qCe41Dn3nm0sNmsUoprI7A

In May, the US, Japan, India and Australia announced a new maritime security initiative, the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), at the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) Summit in Tokyo. (IPMDA), a new maritime security initiative announced at the Quad Security Dialogue summit in Tokyo in May this year, claiming to share maritime information with the goal of combating "illegal fishing" and that it would enhance the maritime surveillance capabilities of countries in the Pacific, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean to "maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific region". Although the wording against China was removed from the official document to the public, it is widely believed by US officials, media and international observers that the initiative is aimed at China.

The IPMDA is one of the few initiatives with teeth of the US-Japan-India-Australia quadrilateral mechanism, but it singles out Chinese fishing vessels, which have never been given such high international influence and strategic status by the world. Analysts generally believe that the so-called illegal activities of fishing vessels are just an excuse or pretext, and that the fundamental purpose of the initiative is to shake or deprive China of its legitimate right to use the sea, aiming to undermine China's international environment for building a strong maritime power and peaceful development through public opinion and diplomatic means, and attempting to build a comprehensive intelligence and information network against China's maritime activities, using non-traditional security cooperation such as fisheries information sharing as a starting point. Specifically, the main elements are as follows.

Firstly, the "stigmatisation" of Chinese fishing vessels, which have already been labelled internationally as non-compliant with rules and damaging to the environment and fisheries resources by the establishment of IPMDA. With its implementation, the US, Japan, India and Australia will continue to increase the hype about Chinese fishing boats "fishing illegally", creating the impression that "Chinese fishing boats are everywhere" in the international arena and creating the image that "Chinese fishing boats are destroying fisheries resources and the environment". The IPMDA's campaign is aimed at creating a negative image of Chinese fishing boats, demonising China's maritime activities and damaging China's international image by creating an image of "Chinese fishing boats are everywhere", "China is coercing other countries through its fishing boats" and "Chinese fishing boats are illegally operating in waters under the jurisdiction of other countries". IPMDA's deliberate targeting of China under the banner of freedom and openness is clearly inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation as stipulated in Article 123 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and contrary to the international practice of regional cooperation.

Secondly, IPMDA intentionally confuses the relationship between the individual responsibility of fishermen and the responsibility of the state. There are exhaustive international conventions on fishing, and a series of well-established laws and regulations in domestic legislation including the Fisheries Law, the Implementing Rules of the Fisheries Law, the Regulations on the Management of Offshore Fisheries, the Regulations on National Inspection of Fisheries, the Measures on National Registration of Fisheries, and the Measures on Monitoring and Management of Offshore Fishing Vessels, and legislatively China has done its duty of prudence. In recent years, China has also introduced autonomous fishing moratoriums on the high seas to protect the marine ecological environment and fisheries resources. Under these circumstances, the US is still "playing dumb" and treats all Chinese fishing vessels as platforms for China to implement its national strategy.

Thirdly, it creates friction for China's maritime diplomacy. From an objective point of view, IPMDA relies mainly on civilian technology and existing data resources, and does not necessarily pose a direct military threat to China. The most important value to the US lies at the diplomatic and strategic level, as the US and other countries base their diplomatic operations and public opinion speculation on the data information, creating international fear and anxiety about China by further amplifying the "China threat", with the intention of fundamentally deconstructing the legitimacy of China's maritime activities. Even if they do not fully achieve their goal, these disinformation and one-sided narratives are likely to create more friction and disruption in Chinese diplomacy and international public opinion. This is precisely what it aims to do, by creating unnecessary friction and disputes between China and other countries in the "Indo-Pacific", and by worsening and poisoning the international environment for China's development.

Finally, the US is strengthening its intelligence sharing to make the "Indo-Pacific strategy" more realistic. Despite its high profile, the US-Japan-India-Australia quadrilateral mechanism is still essentially a platform for dialogue, with little substance and a tendency to ignore the problems of other countries in the Indo-Pacific region. The IPMDA is a grip, and the US and other countries hope to fully mobilise the countries in the region to follow the Indo-Pacific strategy through information sharing. "The Quadripartite Security Dialogue has not yet established an intelligence sharing mechanism, but the existing bilateral agreements between the four countries have laid the foundation for intelligence sharing cooperation. On the basis of bilateral agreements, the US, Japan, India and Australia have deepened information sharing and cooperation among the four countries through a civilian framework such as the Maritime Situational Awareness Partnership (MSAP), paving the way for the further establishment of a four-country military intelligence sharing mechanism. More importantly, under the banner of providing international security public goods for the region, the US, Japan, India and Australia will draw in other countries to participate actively or passively, gradually forming a de facto intelligence or information sharing network against China. In addition, if coupled with its so-called law enforcement cooperation, it will also pose a direct operational challenge to China's maritime activities. The US's so-called "free and open" Indo-Pacific strategy is in fact an attempt to build an exclusive and confrontational coterie full of Cold War thinking, with strategic containment and checks and balances on China as its core objective.

To this end, the US will promote the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) through technical cooperation, public opinion building, narrative competition and diplomatic networking. The US claims that IPMDA will make full use of existing commercial data such as AIS, remote sensing and radio to integrate and expand data from four information centres: the Indian Ocean Information Integration Centre in India, the Information Integration Centre in Singapore, the Australian-funded Pacific Fusion Centre in Vanuatu, and the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency's Regional Fisheries Monitoring Centre in the Solomon Islands. India, Japan and Australia also intend to purchase vessel monitoring information from their space-based radio detection systems from the US company Hawkeye 360 and distribute the data to their partner countries through channels such as the US Navy's Ocean Vision platform.

Since September, media outlets and think tanks such as the New York Times and the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative, which specialises in speculating on China's maritime threats, have begun to build momentum by writing articles that stigmatise the behaviour of Chinese fishing vessels, exaggerating their activities and their impact on the marine environment and even geopolitics. In recent years, the US has shifted the focus of its hype to the distant oceans in a bid to mobilise more members to contain and confront China. Following in the footsteps of China's ocean-going fishing boats, US hype has spread across the globe, creating disinformation and rumours in the world's major oceans.

IPMDA itself is an important part of the competing narratives of the US and other countries, and its tactics are roughly the same as those used to hype China's behaviour in the South China Sea in previous years: first, China is portrayed through public opinion as a troublemaker that undermines regional rules and peace and stability, and then it is constantly reiterated and highlighted in diplomacy, eventually creating a popular discursive reality in public opinion and diplomacy. It can be expected that, on the basis of public opinion hype, the US will next launch a new round of diplomatic offensives.